PROBABLY WILL COME TO NOTHING

I've just hatched a whole novel--beginning, middle, and end---which I've had bits and pieces of floating in my mind for years. It's rough and shaky (and maybe not so great), but it's there in its infant form waiting to grow/hatch into something beautiful, perhaps. I plan to discuss it both with Kevin and Jimmy to see what they think. I have a lot of self doubt with *anything* that I do or create, which keeps me from taking chances. However, lately I've felt more open to new things both scary and creative. I've dreamed of being a writer since I was a small child; I used to write short stories since the age of 7, but stopped when I was about 11.

I've had a bunch of scenes of a magical place in my head, but tonight I put them all together: all the different areas and parts of this place in my mind. I even made a (weak) plot to go with it, but with good storytelling and descriptive writing, I can flesh it out into something decent. After all, I like to show experiences and the feelings attached to them, and let the story come out of that instead of the other way around. It's a dreamlike feel that I have for the style of this novel. There will be a heroin, if you want to call her that. A knight, although he will be enchanted as something else through the whole story. There will be a witch and a toy maker and a cat grove and a main street with lots of tinkling lights. There will be a city and woods on the outskirt, but most importantly, a dock at the end of the land (there will be 2 docks: the one you arrive by boat on and the one at the opposite end of the land, which leads for miles into a dark ocean surrounded by small islands littered with multi-colored shipping crates). There will be ingredients to collect to undo the spell on the knight. There will be much exploring and obstacles along the way.

I already started drawing the map.